Very much enjoyed my presentation to the Early Childhood Ireland organisation in Dublin, at their Global Gathering for Early Childhood. As the graphic to the left attests, the childcare sector had come out of the latest tough crunch to the Irish budget pretty well - and the Irish Minister for Children, Frances Fitzgerald, spoke powerfully at the opening of the conference.
Another joy of the day was following Stuart Brown, the magister ludi of play studies, whose book Play is the best guide to the multidisciplinary nature of play scholarship that you could want. I spent an hour or so with him and his lovely family, trading anecdotes like crazy. Though I doubt I'll beat his about the great Irish mythologist Joseph Campbell, who - at a dinner party with Stuart, Jonas Salk and the physicist Murray Gellman - began to recite Finnegans' Wake, from memory, for 20 minutes solid. At which point, a hitherto sceptical Gellman had to murmur, "you're a genius".
Here's my slides from the day (an underline usually means it's a hotlink to a source or article, so please explore). The Twitter account for ECI is here, and the hashtag for the conference #eciglobal. Anyone who attended and wants to know more about the points make, please don't hesitate to mail me at the contact address on the menu above.
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